Everything Has Changed
by thestarsaresobrighthere
Summary: Afraid of Greatness 2. Even after Azkaban, Sirius claims to know everything about his wife, Melanie (that's me). Well, I had a little secret when he went to prison, & there were somethings I never got to tell him. I should be worried, but I'm just thrilled our daughter, hasn't blown up the house yet. Key word being 'yet'. And by hasn't blown it up, I mean 'beyond repair'. SB/OC AU!
1. Song

**Hey guys, I'M BACK! So, if you haven't read Afraid of Greatness, I strongly recommend it, because it is an extremely important part of this story. So, welcome to the second part of Melanie and Sirius' journey, and the first few chapters are going to be taking place in the States, because as those of you who read Afraid of Greatness will recall, the Taylor's are a very old American family, and while she's also a Malfoy, Melanie left for the States after her best friends' deaths and her husband's incarceration and because she would be able to have comfortable life with her families money, and wouldn't have to worry so much about Cissy, who lives with her at this point (She ran away from Malfoy Manor, what a rebel), being found by her psychopathic cousin, Lucius Malfoy.**

** Sirius and Melanie are both 29 at the beginning of the fic and Harry is going into his Third Year at Hogwarts. ****Oh, and this is going to be totally AU! Just btw.**

**The title came from the song below, because it kind of made sense with the general plot I have laid out in my head.  
**

**Sorry for the ridiculously long A.N.  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy.  
**

**Stars.  
**

_Everything Has Changed  
_

_All I knew this morning when I woke_  
_Is I know something now, know something now I didn't before_  
_And all I've seen since 18 hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile in the back of my mind making me feel like_  
_I just want to know you better know you better know you better now_

_Cause all I know is we said hello_  
_And your eyes look like coming home_  
_All I know is a simple name, everything has changed_  
_All I know is you held the door_  
_You'll be mine and I'll be yours_  
_All I know since yesterday is everything has changed_

_And all my walls stood tall painted blue_  
_But I'll take them down, take them down and open up the door for you_  
_And all I feel in my stomach is butterflies the beautiful kind_  
_Making up for lost time, taking flight, making me feel like_

_Cause all I know is we said hello_  
_And your eyes look like coming home_  
_All I know is a simple name, everything has changed_  
_All I know is you held the door_  
_You'll be mine and I'll be yours_  
_All I know since yesterday is everything has changed_

_Come back and tell me why_  
_I'm feeling like I've missed you all this time_  
_And meet me there tonight_  
_And let me know that it's not all in my mind_

_I just want to know you better know you better know you better now_  
_I just want to know you know you know you_

_Cause all I know is we said hello_  
_And your eyes look like coming home_  
_All I know is a simple name, everything has changed_  
_All I know is he held the door_  
_You'll be mine and I'll be yours_  
_All I know since yesterday is everything has changed_

_All I know is we said hello_  
_So dust off your highest hopes_  
_All I know is pouring rain_  
_And everything has changed_  
_All I know is a new found grace_  
_All my days, I'll know your face_  
_All I know since yesterday is everything has changed_

~Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran


	2. The Lawyer and the Convict

**Disclaimer: Everything that's not mine (the plot, the OC's) is Queen JKR's. If I made it all up, I wouldn't be on FanFiction.**

**HI! So, I know i updated Afraid of Greatness like every weekday, but...don't expect that to happen again, it near killed me. A chapter a day is A LOT.  
**

**But anyways, here's your first look at the older more mature Melanie and the just older Sirius. He's still not real mature. just sad. :(  
**

**But, anyways, read, review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

SIRIUS POV

They were fools. They knew that I was an Animagus, and they don't add guards to my cell. It's too easy to slip out from between the bars of my cell. No one sees me. There is no one to see me. I swim. When I reach shore, I see the date. 1993. It's been twelve years. Twelve years since I had been arrested, for twelve long years, I was in that cell, slowly starving away.

I know Remus won't want to see me, he'd rather scream his secret out to the world. Peter, that little traitor, better be in hiding, or else he's in for a world of pain and trouble. Alice and Frank, I shudder to think about the fate I know they suffered at the hands of my cousin. Marlene: dead. James: dead. Lily: dead. Cissy—I pause to think.

I have no idea what happened to my favorite cousin. I knew that she had been forced to marry Lucius after all, but I wondered if she had managed to escape. It seemed likely that she had managed to slip out in the dead of night, taking any possible children with her. But would she take her children with her, or leave them with her wealthy husband? Either way, I had no way to find her, if she'd even stop to listen, or if she'd just call the Ministry, was uncertain anyways. I push away the option that keeps worming its way into my mind. I'd rather live on the run for the next year as a dog; forced to kill my food than put her in that much danger.

Melanie. She was my everything, until I had been put away. She had been one of the memories that the Dementors hadn't been able to take away from me. I still remembered her. Every single part of her. Her eyes, her smile, her laugh. But then the bad slowly seeps in: I hear her screaming over Lily, screaming at her to wake up, her sobbing into my chest, trying rip her own hair out at the sight of her dead sister and brother. Lily and James. They were gone.

I had no choice and I knew it. We were weak away from each other; I'd have no chance of getting to the rat without her. She'd believe me, that much I was sure. I walked into an empty bathroom, still as a dog and shifted into my human form in one of the stalls. I stretch out my mind, trying to find her using the bond. Nothing. At the time of my arrest, she could be in Paris and I in London and we could still feel each other. That meant that she probably had left the country, gone to America, to somewhere where she could live easily, out of the way of the reporters, all eager to get an interview with the murderer Sirius Black's wife.

I pause and think about what I knew about her. She loved the ocean, which meant near the coast. She loved people, which meant probably a city. If I were Melanie, where would I go? It hit me. New York. I'd go to New York City. Now, how the Hell was I going to get there? I could steal someone's wand, and apparate, but transcontinental apparation was tricky, only done by the most skilled wizards. It's the only way. It takes me almost a month to get to London. The June heat clings to my skin, and makes me start to pant, as a dog, as I walk into the Leaky Cauldron. I slip into Diagon Alley and grab a wand out of a woman's bag, while remaining a dog all the while.

She calls for me to come back, but I just keep running. I eventually lose her and vanish into a dead end alley. I grip the wand and concentrate. What had that idiot professor said? Concentration, something? Was it three C's or three D's? I had been stupid for not listening. I had been too busy making faces at Prongs to pay attention. Why should we after all? We were the Marauders.

Eventually I remember the sensation and feel myself being plunged through a rather tight tube. I can feel myself start to suffocate. I had never been in the tube for this long before, and then it's over and I'm in the middle of Times Square, in one piece. No one even glances up at me, no one screams "Ah! Sirius Black! Someone call the authorities." None of the Muggles even look up at the appearance of a person from the middle of nowhere. I look at myself in a mirror and barely even recognize who I'm looking at. Sunken eyes, tattered robes, disgusting hair, skinny and starving. It can all be summed up in one word: old. I look far older than my 29 years.

Harry had been born right after we were out of school. Lily and James had a fast relationship. They were dating in summer between Sixth and Seventh year and eloped on Christmas of our Seventh. Harry had been born only a couple months after graduation. I had been 18 when I had been arrested. Now, I was 29 and looked about 49.

I test the bond again, and this time I feel her. There she is, so close to my consciousness. I begin to walk, as a human, eager to test my luck. I reach a high-end district of Manhattan and I feel her in one of the high-rises that's blocking out the setting Sun, casting long shadows down the streets. I walk in the building's lobby and enter one of the elevators. I guess she's on what has to be the top floor and press the button. The elevator quickly moves up to the top of the building and the doors ding open with a cheery declaration of "Floor 52!" I slowly walk down the corridor until I feel her mind behind one of the doors. Before I can talk myself out of it, I knock.

MELANIE POV

I wake up June 15, 1993, thinking that today would just be another day. I get dressed how I always do. I put on a tight, mid-thigh length, black dress, and a pair of black platform stilettos and straighten my hair with the wand I only use in Wizard New York and at home. I go to work and talk to the witnesses in the Lingard case, and am told I have a court date for the very same case in a month. Well, three weeks.

At 29, and the only woman in the firm, I was a well-respected lawyer. One who had a nasty past to run from. One that was the reason that I couldn't get a job in the Wizarding World. I go home and don't even bother to take my shoes off. I just fall down on my couch and turn the television on. I hear a knock at the door and I frown: I wasn't expecting anyone. I make my way towards the door, curious about who it was, or maybe Cissy had forgotten her keys again. I unlock the door and come face to face with a very skinny man. He isn't looking at me, but at the floor and I can't make out who the man is.

"Um…can I help you?" He looks at me full on, and I recognize the eyes. The big grey eyes that used to be so full of laughter and mischief that used to light up when he and James would prank the Slytherins, the eyes that cried at our wedding.

"Melanie." Oh, God. It was the same voice. It really was him. For the first time in twelve years, I feel a mind brush up against mine.

"Sirius?" He nods, "How—how in the Hell did you escape? You know what, come in, I'll give you food, maybe have you take a bath, then we'll talk, come on." He looks startled, but doesn't argue. I push him into the kitchen, sit him down with a loaf of bread and say, "start eating" As I go to call Cissy to tell her to spend the night somewhere else. I come back 5 minutes later and the loaf of bread is gone. I say nothing, just grab him by the arm and haul him into my bathroom. It's a nice bathroom, very big, and has a Jacuzzi tub, helpful for right now. I lean over and start the water, making it run hot, and plug it, letting it fill up. I lean up against the counter and gesture towards the now full tub.

"Mel…we need to talk."

"Shut up, Sirius. I'm doing my wifely duties, so be quiet and strip." He doesn't move, "Are you embarrassed, because that's not something I remember about you." I feel a flicker of his mind and I get the point. He was embarrassed, he didn't quite look as good as he did when were 16, but I didn't really care at this point. I was just set on making him healthy again. **Love, you need to get clean. **_Can you leave? This is embarrassing. _I frown **No. **_Please? _**Nope, for better or for worse remember?** I feel my ring finger twitch and his eyes glue themselves to the stone sitting just above my knuckle.

He sighs, recognizing defeat and pulls the destroyed robes that passed as prison clothes off. God, he was so skinny. I could count his ribs from quite some distance, and could see where his vertebrae pushed out under his skin. His hipbones jutted out at an unhealthy angle. He was over 6 feet tall and probably only 130 pounds. Too skinny. I kick off my shoes and sit on the edge of the tub next to him, my feet in the water. I grab shampoo from next to me and instruct him, "dunk." I push his head under and when he comes back up, his head soaked, I give him the bottle. Apparently he's forgotten how to wash his hair, or is in shock.

"Do I have to get in there with you?" He glances up at me and for a minute I see the sex-crazed kid I used to run around Hogwarts with, hooking-up in broom cupboards between classes. I laugh, "There are some things nothing can change, huh?"

"Nothing, Mellie." I smile. No one's called me that in twelve years. Even Cissy avoided it when she could.

"Fine. But only because you apparently forgot how to wash your own hair. I would think it'd be muscle memory by how much you used to baby your hair." I stand up and pull my dress over my head, leaving my bra and panties on, both a lacy black, "Scoot forward." He does as instructed and I sit down in the tub, with him sitting between my legs, "give me the shampoo." It's handed back to me and I squirt some into my hand. I put the bottle on the ground and give Sirius Black's hair the first good wash it's gotten in twelve years.

SIRIUS POV

"Fine. But only because you apparently forgot how to wash your own hair. I would think it'd be muscle memory by how much you used to baby your hair." She pulls her dress over her head and leaves her bra and underwear on. God, she looks good. She actually looks better than when we were in school. Her curves had filled out. She looked softer now, less angular and girlish, more of a woman's body. This woman is so beautiful. She always has been. She looks down at me, "Scoot forward." I do and she slips into the water behind me and I feel her legs on either side of me. I can feel her body heat radiating onto my back. "Give me the shampoo." I had it back to her and she presses her hands onto my scalp.

The woman takes no prisoners and scrubs at my head until it's clean. Like really clean. She moves around behind me, "I'll be right back." She gets out of the water and her bra has become see-through. I can see her soft breasts under the fabric. This was the body that used to be mine to touch and love. She comes back with a pair of scissors and sits in front of me, observing my hair, "Do you want it short, long, or medium-ish?" I shrug, "Medium-ish it is."

She attacks my hair and what she cuts off floats around us in the tub. She looks intensely at my head and is trying to make it as visually pleasing as possible. She's an amazing fighter, a wonderful person, but a hairdresser: she is not. She puts the scissors down and tries to do something with it to make it look passable.

"We'll have to get you to someone who's better at this than I am."

"Mel, I can't go out in public."

"Yeah, you can. The States are outside of the Ministry's jurisdiction. Trust me, I checked before I moved here. You're not a wanted man here. I guarantee you no one even looked up when you walked here, am I right?" I nod, "Well, you're not wanted here, and no one even knows what you 'did', your cousin made damn sure of that." The air quotes made me realize something: she didn't believe the press, and the Ministry, and all of her friends. She knew I didn't do it. Before I could ask her about it she asks me, "Who _was_ the secret keeper, by the way?"

"Peter. It was Peter." She raises her eyebrows,

"Peter as _Peter Pettigrew_? As in our friend Peter?" I nod sadly at her.

"You said my cousin made sure that no one knew about why I was put in jail. Is Cissy here?" She nods at me and smiles a little.

"Yeah, we live together, but no worries, while you inhaled all of our bread, I called her and asked her to crash at someone else's place for tonight. Come on, let's get out of this rather gross water and go to bed. I've had a long day, and I suspect you haven't had a good night's sleep in a while, am I right?" I nod at her,

"Yeah, stone floors don't really equate to comfort. Besides, everybody screaming kind of kept me up." I see that her facial expression flickers from gentle to something that's gone too quick to identify, then she's back to kind and motherly. She stands and helps me up easily, now able to pull me up, with my much reduced weight. She rummages through her closet to throw some of my old clothes at me, "You still have these?" She grins,

"Yeah, I took them when I moved out of the old apartment." I notice how different she is as I'm around her more. How she speaks has become a little harsher due to her time in the States, and she looks much more self-assured than she did last time I saw her. She's still short, but she casts a bigger presence than she ever did at school. I pulled on the boxers and shirt she handed me and she grabbed spandex shorts and an oversized shirt. She grabbed her wand from her vanity and wiped her make-up off her face. She had yet to start getting wrinkles around her mouth and on her forehead, and her eyes seemed just as bright as they did years ago.

"Do you work?" She looks up, surprised at the question,

"Er, yeah. I work as a lawyer. I do mainly domestic cases." She pulls me over to the bed and she sits up against one of the pillows.

"Domestic?" She nods as I sit down next to her,

"Yeah, mainly abuse and assault charges. I only represent whom I want to though. It's a luxury most in the field don't have."

"What are you working on now?" She waves her wand and the lights go out, and I can feel her body heat under the sheets, next to me.

"We call it the Lingard case. It's an abuse case. Really nasty. Erin had to take a restraining order out on her husband and everything. My court date's in three weeks. I told her to call me if Terry, that's her husband, decides to make a surprise appearance at her apartment, so if my phone goes off in the middle of the night, or if you wake up and I'm not here, that's probably why. But enough of that. It's enough to give you nightmares. Go to sleep, and I'll see you in the morning." I let silence fall over the room for a minute.

"Mel?" She answers me after a moment sleep already clouding her voice.

"Yeah?"

"Where does this leave us?" She turns around from her back to her side to look at me,

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, if you don't want to be—" She puts a hand over my mouth.

"Sirius. Listen to me. I'm going to say something, and I don't want you to say anything back for a minute, okay?" I nod under her hand, "I still love you. I do. I never stopped, but I'm a different person now, and so are you. I want this to work, so, so badly. We're going to make this work, okay? Come Hell or high water, we're coming out of the next few months together, and happy." She takes her hand off my mouth after a minute.

"Mel?"

"Hm?"

"I love you."

"I love you too, now go to sleep, I have to get up to tell my boss I'm not coming in for the rest of the week." I fall asleep for the first time in twelve years in a bed, next to the woman I love.


	3. Out of Practice

**Disclaimer: you know...unfortunately**

**So, welcome to chapter 2! This is where things go really crazy, and we meet two VERY important characters in this chapter (you'll know them when you see them).  
**

**Part of this story takes place in NYC, and most of you are probably aware (especially if you live in the States) that the city and the surrounding area has been recently devastated by Hurricane Sandy. 22 million people have been without power for about a week now, so please send your thoughts and prayers to them, and if you were somehow affected by the hurricane: stay strong.  
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**Pictures of what our older characters look like and the two new ones are up on my profile  
**

**Read review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

I wake up the next morning to a face full of long, dark hair and a warm body pressed against my chest, my back pushed into the bed. I move the hair out of my face and look down to see that Mel's head had somehow made its way onto my chest. Her arms were circled around my neck, her hands on the back of my neck, and I had pulled my arms around her waist, still ridiculously small under all of the extra t-shirt fabric. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is even. Her eyelids flutter a little, signaling that she was still dreaming. I turn my head to look at the time, and her clock says it's 10 in the morning. She opens her eyes and smiles up at me,

"Well, hi there." I laugh.

"Hi yourself. What's on the agenda today, boss? Please tell me it involves a haircut." She grins at me as she sits up on the edge of the bed.

"Hey! I did a great job!"

"Lies."

"Is not. But, yes, a haircut is in your immediate future, even though I did a spectacular job, if I do say so myself." She gets up and smiles at me over her shoulder, "I'm going to go hop in the shower. Go grab something to eat from the kitchen. My suggestion would be nothing too rich, you'll make yourself sick."

"Thus the bread?"

"Thus the bread. You ate all of that, so poke around, see if you can find anything. Don't ask me though, Cissy is the chef around here."

"Still can't cook?" I ask her, even though I knew the answer. Her lack of culinary talent in itself is tragic.

"I tried to test to see if maybe I had magically become a better cook when we first moved to the States and I almost blew the kitchen up with the microwave and slice of pizza, so that would be a safe assumption." She called back as she walked into the bathroom.

I got up out of bed and walked out into the rest of the apartment, which I hadn't been able to see last night. It was obvious that they were both very wealthy. Solid, hardwood made up the floors and though there was very little furniture in the apartment, giving the impression that neither of the women was there very often, what was there was nice, and the view of the city had a very high price tag on it, that much I did know. I meandered into the kitchen and started looking through the cabinets for something rather bland to eat. I finally settled on an English muffin and some soymilk from the fridge.

I noticed there was a sliding glass door that led out onto a balcony, with a couple of comfy chairs on them. I walked out onto the balcony and sat in one of the chairs, happily munching on my food, people watching in the building next door.

Melanie walked out to join me as I was observing an elderly couple play with what I assumed was their baby grandchild. She sat next to me in the other chair and

I glanced over at her.

She was wearing a tank top and shorts made out of sweatpants material, her hair was put up in a ponytail, and she had no make-up on. I was having a hard time keeping a train of thought since she was clearly not wearing anything under the thin white tank top, and nothing was left to the imagination with the sun hitting us the way it was.

She grinned at me,

"What? Do I have something on my face?" I smile,

"No, you don't. I was just thinking. I've gotten quite good at that you know. There's not much to do in Azkaban _but_ think, actually." I added dryly. She chuckled.

"Sirius Black, think? Bite your tongue."

"Untrue."

"Uh, not really." She cheekily replied, "So, you can shower again, if you want to, and I'm going to go get ready to leave. I'll see if I can find a passable outfit for you to wear out."

"And where is we're going?" She grins.

"To make you a proper citizen of the world again." She walks off of the balcony and I follow her to find that shower. I knew exactly what she meant when she said if I wanted to shower again. It was going to be a long time before I felt really clean again after being in that place for so long. I follow her into her room to find the bathroom. She had already begun to change into something more 'suitable' for leaving the house. I walked in her room and she is standing with her back to me and is tossing her shirt into the bed, leaving her naked back completely exposed.

Wait, why the Hell am I so embarrassed? The woman's my wife. We've had sex before, for God's sake, we went of a three-week honeymoon where all we did was have sex and here I am blushing like we're 15 and we're going skinny-dipping in James' family lake for the first time. The answer whispers its way into my mind: _she's still beautiful. She's young, and beautiful, and everything you're not anymore. Not good enough. _

She looks over her shoulder and smiles, not attempting to cover her chest or yell at me to get out. I shake my head to get rid of the thoughts and walk into the bathroom to shower.

MELANIE POV

I hear his thoughts. Sirius has gotten sloppy and out of practice at hiding his thoughts from me. It was a problem we had at the beginning of our relationship: we would hear each other's thoughts, which made it very hard to build trust, when we already knew everything. We had been able to block each other out perfectly before had been arrested, but now, he was used to distance doing the job for him, and now it wasn't.

_She's still beautiful. She's young, and beautiful, and everything you're not anymore. Not good enough. _I sigh. This was going to be a long road to recovery. I knew why he was here: he wanted the rat. Of course he did, but I had no intentions of letting him leave the States in his current condition. I knew Azkaban was hard on him, of that I had no doubt, but I had no idea that it would effect how he felt about me and our relationship. I knock on the bathroom door.

"Sirius? Can I come in? I need my phone. I think I left it in there." There is a faint reply that sounds like an okay, so I open the door and poke around the bathroom for my phone, which was currently missing in action. I was looking under a stack of towels when Sirius came out from the shower, dripping wet and smelling like my shampoo, naked. I glance up, smile, and continue my search for my phone.

Normally, I would be less concerned with my missing phone and more concerned with my naked husband at this point, but the Lingard case was worrying me, and had put me on edge. Terry was unstable and volatile and Erin was such a sweet person that she would never raise a hand to another person, even in self-defense. I wanted my phone with me at all times to make sure that she could get to me whenever she needed to, and now I couldn't find it, and it was driving me absolutely crazy.

I decided that it wasn't in the bathroom, like I suspected and went out into the kitchen. I looked everywhere: the cabinets, under my appliances, everywhere.

"Hey, Mel?" I look up.

"Yeah?" I call back warily.

"I found your phone." I perk up quickly and walk into the kitchen, to find Sirius looking in the fridge. I go to stand next to him and there my phone is: right next to the mayonnaise on the second shelf from the top. I sigh in relief and grab it off the shelf, checking for any calls from Erin, or anyone else for that matter. I see that I have a call from Cissy, but that's it. He chuckles,

"Of course you leave it in the fridge. Is that something you do often?"

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

"Not likely."

"That's what I thought. Now, come on, I'm bored. Let's go, let's go, let's go!" I bounce up on the balls of my feet, waiting for him to finally decide he was ready to reenter the world of normalcy. He grins at me, and I grab my keys, as we walk out of the door, "Now, I know it's been a long time since you've been around a lot of people, and this is one of the most populated cities in the country. There's a lot of people here. Try not to freak out, okay?" He nods, listening to my advice.

As we walked out of my building, a cab pulls up and a girl comes out from the back. Her long blonde hair flew out behind her, and her short sundress whipped around her thighs. The cab driver handed her one of her suitcases from the back of the taxi and she handed him Muggle money with a smile. As she approached us, her blue eyes lit up with a smile on her beautiful face. Even though she was only thirteen, she was beautiful, just like her mother had been at her age. She walked up to us, her suitcase in hand. At 13, I couldn't believe the girl was approaching being the same height as me. Then again, my 5 foot 3 height wasn't that insurmountable. She lets go of the suitcase and grins at me as I wrap my goddaughter in a tight hug.

"Auntie Mel." I smiled into her hair.

"Anna. How was Los Angeles?" She hugs me back tightly, her nails digging into my back a little,

"It was amazing! You were right: it's so big! Like New York, but so spread out! And Venice Beach was incredible, and everyone was so nice!" I laugh a little,

"I take it you had a good time."

"Yeah…Aunt Mel, who's this?" she asks suddenly and I realize that Sirius is awkwardly standing next to me watching Anna with a curious look on his face.

"Anna, you know who I told you that my husband, the man who was supposed to be your godfather, was in jail, back in Britain for something he didn't do?" She nods, "Well, Anna, this is Sirius Black, my husband, and your supposed-to-be godfather." I turn towards Sirius, "Sirius, this is Antigone Malfoy, Cissy's daughter and my goddaughter. She has a twin, Draco, that still lives with Lucius back home." Anna gives him a charming smile,

"Call me Anna, please, I hate my horrid name. So, you're supposed to be my godfather? Well, we have a lot of getting to know each other to catch up on. Where are you two going? Please tell me it involves a hairdresser. Oh, and Mel? Tori says she misses you and she'll be." I throw my hands up in the air and send her a warning look that said quite clearly: be quiet about Tori, who was staying out in LA for the summer, who her best friend and godsister had spent that last three weeks visiting.

"It's not that bad!" Sirius laughs,

"It's that bad. Right Anna?" She laughs and gives him a quick smile, still unsure of what to think of this man who had been so absent in her life. I get an idea.

"Anna, how would you like to come with us? We're just going down to 5th to get some clothes for Sirius. And apparently we're getting him a haircut." Anna smirks at me,

"Damn straight we're getting him a haircut. I've seen those pictures of when you were at Hogwarts, and that haircut is doing nothing for him." I grab her suitcase and help her pull her stuff up to the apartment. We shove it in the door and we return to find Sirius chatting up the door guy. We collect him and the doorman smiles at us,

"Have a nice day, Miss. Malfoy, Mr. and Mrs. Black. Oh, and Miss. Malfoy, how is the young Miss. Black?" Sirius looks a little startled, but says nothing. We reach the street again, and I remind Anna to call her mother to tell her she's home safe and with us.

"Fine, I'll call her, but can you call the cab? I hate doing it." I nod and be fore I can yell out, "Taxi!" I hear Anna assuring her mother that she was more than safe and that LA had been fun, as Sirius stands nearby, with his 'I'm thinking' face on.

I felt my phone ring. I look down expecting to see Cissy's name, or even Erin's, but it wasn't. It was Tori. I answer the phone and I don't even get a greeting out of my mouth before my daughter's American voice tainted with a slight British accent comes tearing out at me, excited and eager.

"Mom. Anna just called. Is it true? Is he there? Why didn't you tell me he was coming? I thought you said he was in jail. I know that's he's innocent, but how did he escape? Nate's family gets the Daily Prophet, that's the English newspaper, and it said that he had escaped. Is it true?" I cut her off,

"Tori. Yes, its true, and I don't know how he escaped. I didn't know he was coming until he was outside my door, knocking, calm down, sweetie you're going to burst an artery or something."

"I'm flying home early."

"Don't, Tor."

"I want to meet him, Mom. I want to know my father."

"I understand that Tori, but he doesn't know about you. I figured he should get used to people as a whole before I dumped the child he didn't know about on him. Wait a week, then come home."

"But Mom—"

"But nothing, Victoria. You are staying there for another week, then you can Floo home, or fly home, which ever you like. One week is all I'm asking. Besides, I thought you wanted to spend all this time with Nate because he was moving back to London."

"I do want to see him, but Mom, he's my _father_."

"No, Tori, you're staying there for a week."

"But—"

"Victoria Lillian Black. What did I say?" She sighs,

"Fine. But one week from today, I'm Flooing home, whether you like it or not."

"Thank you, sweetie. I love you."

"Hey, Tor put your pants back on!" is shouted in the background and I hear my daughter's voice fade and she swears at Nate as she laughs. Her voice becomes louder and she says,

"Love you too, Mom. See you in a week." The line runs dead and I hang up.

"Anna. I thought you were calling your mother." She grins at me sheepishly,

"I did. Then I called Tori. I thought she should know. Sorry." I sigh. I couldn't really be mad: I hadn't asked her _not_ to call Tori. I would have done the same thing, if the roles had been reversed, especially if I had been 13, like the two girls were. I would have run right to Cissy or Lily or Marlene or Alice if I had known something as big as that.

SIRIUS POV

"No, Tori, you're staying there for a week." Mel scowls at no one and I assume that she isn't happy with whomever she's talking to. She appears to cot someone off.

"Victoria Lillian Black. What did I say?" I raise an eyebrow. Victoria Lillian Black. There's no way it could be…we were always so careful… Her facial expression relaxes and she smiles

"Thank you, sweetie. I love you." She laughs at something and hangs up the phone.

"Anna. I thought you were calling your mother." The girl grins at her, caught in the act of something or another.

"I did. Then I called Tori. I thought she should know. Sorry." Mel rolls her eyes.

"I'm not _too_ mad, you know. Only a little." Anna smiles at her,

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Aunt Mel." The younger girl checks her phone and smiles at the screen.

"So, one week?" Mel nods tiredly at her goddaughter,

"One week."

"You know, I've had a change of heart. I think I'll go in and take a nap. Jet lag and all that." Mel kisses her forehead.

"Go ahead, dear. See you soon." She nods and that leaves us right where we were the first time we left the building.

She takes me by the hand,

"Come on, let's go."

**If you aren't familiar with the story of Antigone, which is the name of Narcissa's daughter here's the wikipedia page **

** wiki/Antigone**


	4. Once You Go Black, You Never Go Back

**Disclaimer: :(**

**Hi! Chapter 3, who's proud of me? Yeah, you better be. So this is a very important chapter. Not only do we get the full story behind how Cissy and Anna ended up in the States, without Draco, but we also learn the circumstances surrounding Tori's birth, and we get to see how Sirius handles all of this.  
**

**We also get to see the reestablishment of Melanie's and Sirius' lives together, at least in the physical sense, so things are starting to get back to they way they should be.  
**

**Oh, and let me know how you like Tori's POV, I want to know if knowing what being Tori Black is like helps to round her and Anna out as characters. And also let me know if you want to see more of her POV in the future.  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

We call a cab and as we sit there I finally summon up the courage to ask,

"Victoria Lillian Black?" She looks up at me, panicked.

"Yeah. I didn't want to tell you yet. But…"

"I want to know. Is she mine?" Mel opens her mouth to say something along the lines of 'let's talk about this later' but then shuts it, apparently changing her mind. Instead she says,

"Yes. I was going to tell that I was pregnant you when you came home from work, but you never did. I found out you had been arrested, I didn't have time to think about that. I got in contact with Cissy, who had just had Anna and Draco, and we made plans to leave that night. She asked both of her kids but only Anna wanted to come with her, Draco insisted on staying with his father. He was young, only about 6 or 7 months, and his father was his world. I gave birth to Tori here, in the States, about 3 months after we moved." I felt my stomach drop. I was a father. I was a father to a beautiful baby girl. Except she wasn't a baby anymore.

"How old is she?"

"She'll be thirteen in another month. Anna is about 8 months her senior. They both go to Salem Academy, and will be entering their Third Year there."

"I'm a dad."

"I didn't want to tell you, not yet. It's a lot to take in, I know. You didn't pass out, that's good. I did, when the people at St. Mungo's told me I was 4 months pregnant." I start to get mad, completely irrationally, at her. _How dare she_ not tell me about this little girl I was supposed to be raising? She knew and didn't tell me?

"You didn't know before that?" She shakes her head.

"I was an Auror, Sirius, if you'd remember I spent a lot of my time with injuries. I didn't think twice about back pains, or morning sickness, disguised as food poisoning from that pre-packaged food we had to eat. That was before she started kicking or moving. I found out the day you were arrested. I was busy too, and didn't notice a missed period or two either. Until I missed four, I didn't notice anything, and when I did, I wanted to be sure before I said anything to you. That last thing we needed in those days was a pregnancy scare." I feel the anger recede, and is replaced by sadness,

"And now she thinks I'm a mass-murderer."

"Of course she doesn't. She knows you're innocent, and as a matter of fact, I had to beg her to stay in LA for a week, just until you could get used to the thought of having a daughter." I relax at that thought.

"Why's she in LA?"

"She has a friend that lives there, Nate Jefferies, he's moving back to London at the end of summer, and she wanted to spend the summer with him, because she knows she won't be seeing him for a long while. Anna was just getting back from visiting Nate, and of course, her godsister. Cissy was made her Godmother, and you can make whoever you like her Godfather. I assumed it would be Moony, but you always were full of surprises." I laugh,

"Mellie, you just told me I had a 13 year old daughter and that Narcissa's daughter is my Goddaughter. _You're_ full of surprises."

VICTORIA POV

"Hello?" I hear Anna on the other end of the line, her voice excited and hyper, as per usual.

"Tor, it's me. So I was just getting out of my cab at home and I see your mom, which is totally weird right? I mean she _always_ works during the day. But there's this guy with her, and I'm like 'who's this?' so I go up to her and hug her and say hi and all of that and so I ask her who it is, but I already know, Tor. I already knew who it was." I sigh to myself as Anna says all of this in a single breath,

"Who is it?"

"Well, I already knew who he was because of his eyes. You know what people always say about you, _right_?" I twirl a piece of hair around my index finger absentmindedly,

"Yeah, I'm the spitting image of my mother except for…oh my God, except for my eyes." I sit straight up and feel my eyes getting bigger, earning a concerned stare from Nate. I wave him off, and resume listening to Anna,

"Yeah, exactly. I got to go, your mom's coming. Bye sis."

"Bye, An." The line goes dead and Nate looks concerned,

"Are you okay?" I nod.

"Yeah. That was Anna. She said that, well, you know how my dad's in jail for something he didn't do?" He nods. I pick up his father's Daily Prophet and hold it up to him. On the front there was a picture of a man with the headline: BLACK ESCAPES: MINISTRY BEFUDDLED "Well, that's him, and he just showed up on my mother's doorstep. Anna just ran into him as she came home from the airport." Nate sighs.

"You're going home, aren't you?" I nod.

"I'm going to call mom." I pick up my phone and dial my mom's cell phone.

It rings three times before she answers. I start talking before she says hello.

"Mom. Anna just called. Is it true? Is he there? Why didn't you tell me he was coming? I thought you said he was in jail. I know that's he's innocent, but how did he escape? Nate's family gets the Daily Prophet, that's the English newspaper, and it said that he had escaped. Is it true?" She interrupts me, apparently out of patience with my rambling.

"Tori. Yes, its true, and I don't know how he escaped. I didn't know he was coming until he was outside my door, knocking, calm down, sweetie you're going to burst an artery or something." I feel my heart start to beat faster. I had listened to Anna, but I really believed my mom. She's my _mom._

"I'm flying home early." I said, leaving no room for arguments. Apparently she didn't hear my tone.

"Don't, Tor." She said, and I was momentarily hurt, but quickly let it go.

"I want to meet him, Mom. I want to know my dad." I pleaded with her. It was unfair. Anna had already met him.

"I understand that Tori, but he doesn't know about you. I figured he should get used to people as a whole before I dumped the child he didn't know about on him. Wait a week, then come home."

"But Mom—" I started to say

"But nothing, Victoria. You are staying there for another week, then you can Floo home, or fly home, which ever you like. One week is all I'm asking. Besides, I thought you wanted to spend all this time with Nate because he was moving back to London."

"I do want to see him, but Mom, he's my _dad_." I emphasized again.

"No, Tori, you're staying there for a week."

"But—" I began again.

"Victoria Lillian Black. What did I say?" I sigh, finally accepting defeat.

"Fine. But one week from today, I'm Flooing home, whether you like it or not."

"Thank you, sweetie. I love you."

"Hey, Tor put your pants back on!" Nate yells at me and I laugh at him as I yell,

"Shut up Nate! Hey give me my fucking pants back!" I shout at him as I chase him for my pants, in my bathing suit. He throws them at me, laughing at my face.

"Love you too, Mom. See you in a week." I say to her as she laughs on the other end of the line, and then hang up, to spend the next week with one of my closest friends.

"Nate. It's him. I'm going to meet my dad." He hugs me then grins,

"Come on, let's go see how far we can throw Dustin's mattress."

"With him on it or not?"

"What kind of person do you take me as? Of course he'll be on it." I laugh and we run off to further harass Nate's older brother.

REMUS POV

I'm coming home from another Full Moon when I realize there is someone in my house. I pull out my wand and open the front door and warily walk into the living room. There is an old man sitting on my sofa. He has a long white beard, purple robes, and half-moon glasses.

"Hello, Remus. I was wondering if you are in the market for a job?" I hesitate. If not for this man, my best friends would still be alive, with me, and sane. This man always had a plan, and it usually involved collateral damage in the form of ruined lives.

"I'm interested. What kind of job?" I answer.

"A teaching position. Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"DADA is a cursed position."

"Perfect for a cursed man, then." I nod and sit down with Albus Dumbledore to discuss the terms of my employment at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

MELANIE POV

"Good God, how do women do this all day, and _take pleasure out of it_?" My husband groaned at me, running his hands through his freshly cut hair. It was 7 at night, the Sun was getting ready to set, and we had just returned to the apartment after a full day of shopping, haircuts, gym memberships, and being idiots. Anna looks up from her position on the couch,

"It's an acquired taste. It's gets better, trust me." He looks like he doesn't quite know what to make of this, so he says nothing but,

"Crazy women." And walks into the room we were now sharing with his copious bags of belongings. I sit down next to Anna on the couch and ask her,

"Whatcha watching, An?" She smiles and replies,

"Sex and the City." She lies down and puts her head in my lap, still watching the show. Cissy and I had pretty much raised each other's child, along with our own. I knew Tori considered Cissy a mother as much as I was to her, and I suspected the same for Anna.

Sirius walks back out.

"Mel?" I look up, craning my head over the back of the couch, so my vision was upside down and answered him,

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going to go to the gym. I feel skinny and weak." I nod.

"Okay, just take your wand with you. Parts of the city get pretty shady after sundown." He shifts uncomfortably,

"I don't have my wand anymore. They took it during the arrest." I frown. I can't give him mine, as I was the only adult in the house. Anna perks up.

"You can take mine! I'm not even allowed to use magic during summer." She gets up off my lap and runs into her room, to get her wand from her trunk. She returns with her wand and hands it to him with a smile.

"Thanks, Anna." She smiles even brighter,

"Don't mention it. You're my best friend's dad and my Godfather, it's no problem, just take good care of it." He jumps a little at the dad reference but says nothing, just kisses me on the forehead, smiles at Anna one last time on his way out, says bye to the both of us, and leaves. We sit there for about an hour watching Sex and the City when the doorknob rattles. The lock slides up and Cissy walks in. Anna leaps up to hug her mom and Cissy says to her

"Hey sweetie how was LA?" She grins and proceeds to tell her mom all about her adventures with Tori and Nate. Once she's done Cissy checks the time. 8 o'clock.

"Anna, dear, could you run down to the pizza joint for dinner?" She nods and takes a 20 from her mom and runs out, probably trying to grab a cab before the shift change.

Cissy smiles at me and pulls me into a tight hug.

"Sweetie. What's it like? Well, what's he like?" I smile weakly at her.

"It's amazing to have him back, Cis, but he's so thin. You should have seen him when he showed up here. I didn't recognize him. My own husband. It was his eyes. That's how I knew. I saw his eyes and knew it was him. He's so skinny it scares me. He's at the gym right now. He said he felt weak, and I'm not surprised. He has gotten lazy with blocking his mind. I hear a lot now. This morning he was thinking that he wasn't good enough to be married to me, Cissy. _To me_! If I ever find Peter I swear to God, I'm going to put him through Hell for this."

"Peter?" I sigh,

"Yeah, he was apparently the real secret-keeper." Cissy's eye blaze with the Black family temper fueling her anger.

"That bastard."

"I know."

"Look Mellie, I wouldn't worry about the inferiority complex, it will go away the more Sirius feels like Sirius again and less like a prisoner in his own body. Does he know about Tori?" I nod.

"I told him today, after he met Anna. He took it better than I did when that Healer told me I was going to be a mom." She laughs,

"So he _didn't_ pass out?"

"Ha. Very funny, but no, he didn't. He wants to meet her, I think, but he's also pretty worried about what she's going to think of him. She's coming back in a week."

"It will be good for the girls to have a positive male role model in their lives seeing as all they know about men is that Lucius is an ass and that you deal with men who beat their wives and children on a regular basis. But Tori's coming home so early? She was supposed to go to school with Nate." I nod.

"Anna called her to tell her, and now she's demanding that she Floo herself home this time next week." Cissy smiles at me, but looks concerned too.

"Mel, you do know that he's going to have to go after the rat eventually. Are we going to have to move back home? A war's coming, and I know you too well for you to tell me that you want no part of it. You're a soldier Mel, you always have been. You live for the fight, and you would go crazy sitting on the sidelines. If the Dark Lord does come back, Dumbledore will call the Order back into action. The question is will you answer? Will Sirius answer? And what about Tori? Will she end up fighting like her parents? Or will she hide like your sister?"

I paused before I answered her to think about that. Were we going to have to move home? I sigh, knowing that I couldn't let Sirius go to Britain by himself, and as soon as Tori got wind, she'd insist on coming with us, and of course Anna would demand to go with her Godsister, and that would mean that Cissy would have to go with her daughter.

"I think we are going to have to move back home. We'll talk to the girls about it when they're both back. We'd have to enroll them in Hogwarts, not like it'd be a real hardship: they've been begging to go there since they were eight and we told them that's where we went and I met Sirius and we had the best times of our lives and they hate Salem anyways, especially now that Nate's not going to be going there. I know my daughter better than anyone else: she'll end up fighting, they both will. We've done our best to prepare them so far, and that's not going to stop now."

It was true: Cissy and I had sent them to martial arts classes since they were four and they had both had received their black belts a month ago, just before they had left school for the summer. We taught them defensive spells during the summer when we all had a moment to spare, and at 13, the two girls were formidable in a fight, especially together.

Just then, Sirius walked in, sweating and his mind gave off an exhausted feeling, telling me he had just exercised himself into the ground, trying to take control of his life. He smiles at me and Cissy stands up to greet her favorite cousin.

"Sirius Black, good God, it's been a long time." He smiles at his cousin and hugs her.

"Cissy Malfoy…or are you back to Black?" She grins,

"Back to Black cuz." He chuckles

"You know what they say." She looks confused,

"I don't, actually." At the same time I say,

"I do." He grins at me and I laugh,

"Go ahead and tell her Mel, what _do_ they always say?"

"Once you go black you never go back." Cissy laughs and grins,

"Ah, I'd forgotten that, but it's true." Anna walks in as she's talking with a pizza, and the change from the 20. She hands her mom the change and puts the pizza in the middle of the kitchen table. We all gather around and grab a slice of pizza and eat, talking happily. **Slow down Sirius, you don't need to make yourself sick.** He says nothing in return, but the pace at which he's eating does slow noticeably. Anna seems to take an instant liking to her Godfather and they're talking and laughing in a much more relaxed way after about half an hour.

The clock soon chimes 11 and Anna begins to yawn. Cissy smiles at her daughter and murmurs quietly,

"Come on, An, let's get you to bed, huh?" Anna tiredly nods, and Cissy leads her daughter off to bed, whispering to me on the way by, "I'm going to bed too, have a good night you two." She winks and I flick her in the ear jokingly as she passes, Anna putting most of her weight on her mother. Sirius' mind feels exhausted and I stand and put my arms around him,

"Let's get to bed, too, hm?" He nods and we quietly walk into our room. He pulls his shirt and pants off, too tired to actually change, and I strip down to just my teal panties and a tight black tank top. I brush my teeth and then pretty much fall into bed.

Sirius joins me a moment later and his breathing doesn't deepen or steady with sleep after a while, I turn around to face him, and wrap my arms around his neck. I see the look on his face, it's only there for a moment, but I see the penned up sexual frustration cross his face. I couldn't really blame him. He pretty much couldn't keep our hands off each other before he was imprisoned and then he went to absolutely no human contact for twelve years.

I kiss him softly and he automatically responds by pulling me closer to him. I feel his ribs and hipbones under his skin, more prominent than they should be. I run my tongue over his bottom lip and his moans and opens his mouth as he bites my mouth and the skin around it. His hands slip under the front of my shirt and run over my stomach. I push into his touch, arching my back off the bed, as he rolls over so that he's on top of me. I run my hands over his shoulders, across his chest. He pulls back for a minute.

"Mellie, if this is some kind of pity thing…" I frown at him.

"Shut up Sirius, I want this just as much as you do, which judging by what's going on in that pretty head of yours is a lot." I smirk and that's all the encouragement he needs. He pulls off my tank top and runs his hands over my breasts harshly.

I moan into his shoulder as my nails cut into his back, trying to muffle the noise I knew we were making. I wrap my legs around his waist as he pulls on my last remaining article of clothing. He wiggles off my underwear and then I'm naked. I yank hard on his boxers then he's naked. It isn't the first time I've seen him naked since his return, but it's certainly the most memorable. This is the first time he's seen me naked since the 70's, and he's enjoying it from the feel of his mind. His mouth slides down to my breasts, and kisses them tenderly He slides down more and kisses my stomach. I squirm a little in anticipation, knowing what was coming next. He kisses my thighs, and I wrap my legs around his neck.

And that was how Sirius Black and I broke our 12-year celibate streak. And might I say: it was quite spectacular.

**I almost forgot to mention that the rings of the Black's are pretty important in this fic, and i put pictures of them up on my profile, so check it out.**

**Stars.  
**


	5. A Family of Rule-Breakers

**HI! Long time no see! So, this chapter is extra long, well, for me, and it's because I love you all! Anyways, this is a super important chapter, plot wise because, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but Melanie puts up a massive front with Anna and Tori, and they're both under the impression that she was never young and crazy, and the Mellie from Afraid of Greatness. But anyways, this one is important because that whole persona starts to crumble with the introduction of someone who knew her as a teenager.**

**Oh, and obviously Tori has an aversion to rules, she's a Black.  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy  
**

**Stars.  
**

SIRIUS POV

I wake up to sunlight. I open my eyes and roll over, facing away from the window that the early morning Sun was shining through and towards Melanie. She is sound asleep, and wearing nothing but the engagement ring I gave her almost fifteen years ago stacked on top of her wedding band, which was thin and silver, and set with alternating diamonds and emeralds. It was an old ring. It had been my mother's and my grandfather's wife before her, all the way back to the founding of my family. I didn't particularly care about the family history, but we both liked the idea of being able to access my family vaults whenever we needed to and that we'd have something to give our kid in the form of the family ring that I had worn as a child and then as a teenager.

I wondered idly if Mel had saved my wedding band. I had left it at home on purpose the day I had gone after Peter, knowing I was going to be caught, and all my possessions would be stripped from me in the prison. I resolved to ask her about it when she woke up, and if she had given the heir's ring to Tori. I sigh, and knowing I should get up, sit up, running my hands through my hair. I get dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I grab my trainers on my way out and I'm surprised to see Cissy and Anna are both already up. Cissy glances up and grins,

"Hey, sleepyhead, late night?" She smirks a little and I grin goofily,

"Get used to it cuz. You wouldn't happen to be making breakfast, would you?"

"Oh, you two are disgusting, and I would be, actually. Are eggs fine?" I nod and sit next to Anna.

"Sirius?"

"Yeah?"

"You two are cousins? Does that make me your niece?" I pause to think about that,

"I think it makes me your second cousin. Right Cissy?" She says nothing, thinking it over, then nods,

"That sounds right to me. Are you going down to the gym, Sirius?" I nod.

"Yeah, I feel very weak and I know there's no way I'm a healthy weight." I say as Cissy puts an enormous plate of food in front of me, and I proceed to gorge myself on the entire thing. Melanie comes out of our room in a pair of spandex shorts and the t-shirt I had worn yesterday as I'm making my way through the hash browns (which were amazing, just by the way). She sat down next to me and smiled as she put her hair into a high ponytail,

"Good morning, everybody. Cissy, aren't you supposed to be at work?" She smiles at her best friend,

"Nope, I have a family emergency that has taken me out to Colorado quite suddenly." Anna looks confused,

"We don't have any family in—oh." Her eyes widened in understanding. Melanie chuckles at her Goddaughter. Cissy checks the time and asks,

"Mel, don't you have Pilates in like 25 minutes?" She looks up at the clock, swears loudly, Cissy reprimands her for swearing in front of her daughter (and is promptly disregarded), and Mel runs back into our room. She comes back out 30 seconds later in the same spandex shorts and a sports bra, with running shoes on her feet. Cissy tosses Mel her house keys and she looks at me,

"Well, are you coming or not? Are we going to the same place, you know." I nod and we both hurry out of the building and she calls a cab quickly. As we're sitting in the back of the cab she says,

"Sorry about rushing you out of the house, I'm not used to oversleeping this late." I check the time,

"Mel, it's 8 in the morning."

"I know, I'm usually up before this, but I always did sleep better when I wasn't alone. And burning calories late at night." The cab driver coughed loudly and she frowned,

"What? I've heard stories about people having sex in taxi's, so don't even go there." The driver looked like he didn't quite know what to make of that, but said,

"Lady, they're more then just stories for some of us." She raises her eyebrows,

"I am so, so, sorry."

"Me too." He answered sagely, "We're here, by the way." She said thank you and paid him our fare. We walked into the gym and she immediately left with a parting,

"I'll be about an hour, so try not to kill yourself while I'm gone, okay?"

ANTIGONE POV

I was walking out of my room when the Floo lit up. Out stumbled a beautiful girl, a carbon copy of her mother with her small stature and long dark hair, but she had her father's big grey eyes. She had a pair of shorts on and a pretty, white, off the shoulder top on. She was barefoot and held a suitcase in one hand, and a wand in the other. I smile at her, but then I realize that Aunt Mel had said she'd be coming home in another week, not in like a day.

"Tor…you need to go back. You're not supposed to be here, you know." She snorts,

"When have I ever listened to the rules, An? I wanted to come home, Nate understood when I told him I had to come home."

"Your mom is going to be so mad." Tori appears to ignore that and asks,

"What's she like with him here? Is she different?" I think about my Godmother's behavior over the past couple days and nod.

"Yeah, she's different. She smiles more, and laughs and jokes. She's much more centered and happy with him here. Do you remember what my mom told us? About the Stress Cardiomyopathy?" Tori shakes her head no as she lugs her suitcase into her bedroom to unpack, she waves her wand and her belongings magically unpack themselves. Strictly speaking, we weren't allowed to use magic outside of school, but both of our mothers were witches and it was next to impossible to see who cast the spell, so we could use magic at home, even if we weren't really supposed to.

"Well, she said that in Sixth Year they had a huge fallout, and didn't speak for like 3 months. Do you remember it now?" Tori shakes her head again, "Well, as it turned out, living without each other was pretty damn hard and your mom almost died. Are you sure you don't remember this? Heart Break Syndrome?" Her eyes light up at the last part and I could tell she remembered the phrase, even if she didn't remember the story around it, "Well, it's like she's had that for the last 12 or so years. It's like she's awake." Just then the doorknob rattles and there are voices entering the apartment. Mel and Sirius. I whisper to the youngest Black,

"Stay here until I say otherwise." She nods and I walk out to greet the two parents who were unaware that their daughter was in the other room.

VICTORIA POV

"Stay here until I say otherwise." I nod at Anna's words and hear her walk out into the living room to greet my parents. My parents. God, that sounds strange. I pull on my shirt nervously. What if he didn't like me? What if I wasn't good enough? I push those thoughts away. I have always been good enough for Mom, so why not my dad too?

"Hey, Aunt Mel, Sirius. So, you know how you told Tori to stay in LA for the week?" Mom's voice is audible.

"Yeah…Anna, what's going on?"

"Well, you know Tori, and her certain, erm, disregard for the rules." A man chuckles,

"You didn't tell me she was a mini-marauder in the making." Mom's voice is a little sharp, but playful and happy too, unlike anything I'd ever heard from her, when she answers him,

"She is _not_ a mini-marauder," I can almost hear the air-quotes, "Sirius. And don't even think about giving her that damn map either." There's more laughter,

"You didn't think the Map was so stupid back when we were 15 and sneaking out of the castle all the time." She laughs and concedes,

"Fine. The Map wasn't stupid, but that's besides the point."

"What did you expect Mel? She's half me, and half you. And I'm the tame one in this relationship." I raise an eyebrow. Mom was the wild one? She was always so into the rules, and always tried to do what was best. Anna was apparently thinking along the same lines,

"_Her_, a rule-breaker?" I hear my father laugh,

"You didn't tell them?" I hear a groan emitted from Mom.

"Sirius. Don't."

"Well, I don't know if you're aware of the fact that your Godmother got it into her head somewhere along the line in her academic career, that whenever she got really upset with this girl, named Rita Skeeter, it was okay to transfigure her into different animals, and leave her that way."

I can't take it anymore and come out of my hiding place to come face to face with Anna standing in front of a couple. The man is tall, albeit very skinny, and the woman is hiding her face in his shoulder, covering her bright red face with her hands. The man looks up at me from the woman and I stare at him. Mom keeps hiding her face. All of a sudden her head snaps up and she turns around to stare at me harshly, obviously upset.

That was something I hadn't expected: she was always even-tempered. Always. I think I've seen her lose her temper maybe once, when a reporter came up to us and asked me questions about my family while we were on vacation in Spain. She opens her mouth to yell, but she stops and turns to face her husband with an incredulous look on her face. He stares back and they deadlock for a minute until she sighs and waves her hand towards me and she clears her throat.

"Erm, Tori, this is Sirius, your father. Sirius, this is Victoria, your daughter. Ready? Set? Go." I stare at him, and he stares at me for a long minute. Anna quietly slips into her bedroom and Mom sits on the couch, watching her husband and daughter meet. I laugh nervously,

"I'd say how are you, but I'm pretty sure that would be inappropriate right now." He smiles at me and Mom nods encouragingly at him as he glances over his shoulder to where he was sitting. He raises an eyebrow and she nods again discreetly.

"Why don't we take a walk?" I nod in agreement and Mom throws her keys at the back of his head and I open my mouth to say something brilliant like 'duck!' or 'hey, those keys are going to hit you in the head!' when he turns and catches them, as if he knew she was going to throw them. He winks,

"I've known you far too long for that Mellie." She sticks her tongue out at him and he laughs as we walk out the door of the apartment. Mellie. It was a nickname that I'd never heard for my mother, but it suited her somehow. It reminded me less of my mother and of a teenager, someone who was wilder, younger, and less burdened with the cares she has now. Cissy had told me of the times when she and my father had repeatedly sneaked out of their school to go on dates, and just be kids.

I watch him from the corner of my eye as we walk out of the building. He looks very different than the man in all of the pictures my mom and Cissy have, skinnier, sadder, and much, much older. My father before he was arrested was tall, muscular, and very good-looking. He and Mom had made a very pretty couple when they were 17 and 18. I had a feeling that was because of the prison because he was still looking much better than when his Azkaban picture was taken, the one that was being printed in the Daily Prophet in mass, even if he didn't look like he was 20 anymore. Phil nods to us as we walk out the door.

"Miss. Black, erm, Mr. Black?" I wave cheerily and nod back to the befuddled doorman, who is still staring at the man next to me, trying to discern if I was actually his child or not, thus the use of the questioning voice.

When we're out on the streets for a while, I finally give in to the silence and try to help my clearly struggling father find something to say.

"Look, I don't know you at all, just what Mom and Cissy have told me, and you obviously know nothing about me, seeing as you didn't know I existed until yesterday, stop me when I'm wrong." He shakes his head,

"No, keep going."

"Well, this all seems a little ridiculous to begin with but do you just want to start with the basics?" He nods thoughtfully,

"Okay, go for it."

"Okay…hmm…So, my name's Victoria, but please call me Tori everyone else does, I'm turning 13 in a month, I go to Salem Academy here in the States, my best friend is Anna, who is also my Godsister, my favorite color is purple, and my favorite word is serendipity, because it's fun to say and it sounds like it's meaning." I take a breath in the stream of words, and motion for him to start talking.

"Hmm…Okay, so you obviously know I'm your father, dad, whatever you want to call me. You can even call me by my first name, I don't really care. But anyways, my full name is Sirius Orion Black, because Orion is my father's name. Your mother told you about her less than pleasant relationship with her parents?" I nod, remembering the vague details she'd give when I'd ask her about my grandparents, "Yeah, well, mine weren't any more friendly than hers. Have you seen those three scars on her hip?"

"Mom has a lot of scars." I dryly answer him.

"The three lines that are parallel to each other on her left hip." I think about it and nod. I had seen those. I had actually asked her about them once and she had vaguely said they were scars from the war back in Britain.

"I've seen 'em."

"Well, my mother gave them to her." I raise an eyebrow,

"Why?"

"Your grandparents, yes all four of them, tried to arrange a marriage between your mother and my younger brother, Regulus. Of course, we weren't dating at the time, but as her best friend and closest confidant, it was still my job to help her escape, and about this time of year, in 1975 we ran away, but unfortunately, mother dearest caught up with us. She was in a coma for five or six days, and in St. Mungo's, that's the magical hospital in London, for over a week, you know." I feel like passing out from shock. My mom, the woman who can't cook to save her life, ran away from home. She was actually kind of a badass. Hm, who knew? He continues, and I find myself more and more enthralled with the lives my parents had lived,

"I'm an Animagus, and my form is a big black dog. I am registered, even though I went through the process illegally. When we were in our final year in Hogwarts, that's the school we went to, Lily, your mom's best friend, and James, my best friend, actually ran off and eloped. Your mother and I were the two witnesses, and you actually have a Godbrother too, you know." I did know that,

"Yeah, Harry. But we can't see him because the British Ministry is stupid and think you're guilty." He nods,

"Yeah, and Lily was even pregnant by the end of our schooling and Harry was born about 5 months after graduation. I married your mother in early July of '77, we were 18, and Harry was born August 31, 1977. October 31, 1978, Halloween, well, you know what happened." I nod at him, interested in the things that had remained unknown for such a long time about my mom.

"When did you two start dating?" I ask, unable to contain my curiosity. Mom had always been very cagey about her early relationship with my father, which had naturally made me more eager to know about it. He starts to answer then frowns at nothing in particular.

"I don't think your mother would like it very much if I answered that without asking her first. Actually, I know she'd be pissed. Just don't tell her I told you that." I groan dramatically, unable to help it.

"Please. She never tells me anything." I think about the puppy eyes I'd seen my friends use on their fathers, and wonder if it would work on mine. I give it a try and do a mini-victory dance in my head when he starts to crumble.

"Fine. We started to date on New Years Day, 1976, the middle of our Sixth Year."

"How did you ask her out?" I ask eagerly, now that I was finally getting my questions answered.

"Well, I didn't really. We both, along with Cissy, Lily and James had sneaked out of Hogwarts and were in the local village to bring in the New Year, and when it hit midnight, Lily and James kissed. Well, James kissed Lily and she slapped him, but that's beside the point. Your mother turned around to laugh or say something or another to me and I kissed her. And yeah, that's pretty much it." I nod thoughtfully at that. I suddenly have a question that I realize has been burning in my mind for a long time.

"Why'd you marry her?" He looks startled, but answers like it's the most obvious thing in the world,

"I love her." I give him the 'are you serious, of course you're Sirius, please elaborate' face, "Well, when we were oh, I'd say 17, I knew. I don't know, I just woke up in the middle of the night one night and your mom was asleep next to me and, well, I just kind of knew. It's a little hard to explain. Sorry." I nodded again (I've been doing a lot of that), but something didn't quite fit.

"Knew what?" He shifts his weight around as we continue to walk,

"That I wanted to wake up like that for the rest of my life." He looks around and I realize that it's almost completely dark out.

"We should probably head home. It's getting late." He laughs,

"Please tell me you know how to get there." I laugh at him,

"I do. Some of us have lived here for more than three days."

"Touché." I look at him again and see how my mom had fallen in love with him. He had a charisma around him, even now after twelve years in prison. I could hardly imagine what he would have been like at school. From what Cissy had said, he and James Potter had absolutely ruled that school. Popular, smart, and good-looking, they were the coolest kids around (her words, not mine), adored by teachers and students alike. I realized for the first time that I maybe wasn't the only one who had felt his absence for the last twelve years.

We were walking in the door to the building when his head snaps up, a complete personality change from all of 5 seconds ago. He speaks in a strained voice when I ask what the problem is.

"Your mom, she doesn't have nightmares, does she?" I hesitate before answering,

"Maybe sometimes, but she always says there's no point in worrying about the because there's nothing she could do to stop them. She says the only thing that can make the bad dreams go away is back home in Britain." He nods as I speaks and when we walk into the apartment, I see Mom is asleep on the couch, clearly she had fallen asleep waiting for us to return. Dad gently shakes her by her shoulder and I hear him say softly,

"Mellie, wake up. It's just a nightmare. You're safe." Her eyes stay sealed shut, and he shakes her harder, "Mel. Get up now." She starts to murmur in her sleep, and Dad apparently doesn't like the sound of it because when he speaks again, his voice is sharp and commanding, something I had never heard from a man, who up until now seemed pretty gentle. "Melanie Jasmine Black, wake the hell up!" Her eyes fly open and she screams, something I had never seen or heard her do before. He grabs her wrists and pins her to the couch as she attempts to get up. Dad turns to me from where he was holding her down and says quietly, commandingly,

"Tori go to bed. Now. And stay there." I nod and run to Anna's room, where she's awake and waiting for me to brief her on the latest father-daughter drama. She smiles when I come in,

"Hey, how'd it go?" I say nothing but sit next to her on her bed. I realize I'm shaking a little, and so does Anna, "Wow, Tor, what happened? Are you okay?"

"I—I'm fine. It's Mom. We—we came home and she…she was having a nightmare, I think. Dad tried to wake her up, but she didn't so he tried again, he shook her awake, and her eyes like flew open and we screamed, An, she screamed and I think she was crying and she look terrified. I was scared to living death."

SIRIUS POV

I was scared to living death by Melanie. I had been walking into the building when the nightmare had started. I had seen a flash of it just for a moment, and I was positive Tori hadn't noticed that I had been inside her mother's head for a moment, just long enough to see the inside of a basement and Lucius Malfoy's face.

**Dun dun dun. So, what did everyone think about Tori's return? I had a really hard time writing the meeting of Sirius and Tori, and I couldn't shake the idea of Tori seeing the effects of the horrible nightmares her mother has, because she never sees her mom out of control.**

**I hope everyone liked it, I know I sure did!  
**

**See you soon :)  
**


	6. What's Your Emergency?

**Disclaimer: You know the drill.**

**Hello! So, about this chapter: very dramatic! Anyways, I know a lot of you are like 'when are they going back to England?' Well, remember, this is still June, and Hogwarts doesn't get back in session until September 1st, so we still have a little while in the States.**

**Oh, and no one hate me for the ending. Please.  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy.  
**

**Stars.  
**

MELANIE POV

The first thing I'm aware of is my hand flying at Sirius' face. As I slowly slip back into consciousness, I become more aware of my surroundings. Sirius had pinned me down to the couch, to prevent me from hurting him or myself. I see Tori standing in the corner, looking terrified, and I'm horrified with myself. She had seen.

I had worked myself to death to protect her from the fact I still have the bone crushingly terrifying dreams almost every night, and she had seen one of them right in front of her face.

"Tori go to bed. Now. And stay there." Sirius tells her quietly, leaving no room for her to argue with her father. She runs off and I suspect she's gone to Anna's room instead of her own. I start to shake. Sirius immediately removes himself from holding me down, and sits down next to me as I pull myself into something resembling a sitting position. I wordlessly sit in his lap as the tears start to fall. He wraps his arms around me and I quietly cry into his shoulder, "Mellie…do you want to talk about it?"

I stick my dream into his mind. It would only take a couple seconds for him to see the nightmarish place I had been stuck in for almost two months. Once the nightmare stops he hugs me tightly.

"It's never going to happen again. I swear." I say nothing, but just sit there, crying, "Mel, we need to move, Tori and Anna don't need to see you like this. Can you walk?" I make no indication either way, "Okay, well wrap your legs around me. I can't legitimately carry you anymore without dropping you, or at least I don't feel comfortable with it." I do as he says and wrap my legs around his waist. Through an amazing show of strength for someone who had escaped prison recently, he put his hands under my thighs and carried me to our room as I continually cried.

I don't even know why I was so upset. I just couldn't get the tears or the incessant trembling to stop. He places me down on our bed gently and I crawl under the covers.

I knew that this was really bad. I was an adult and I had a child to take care of. I hadn't clocked out when I had been alone for the last twelve years, and I sure as hell wasn't about to now. I felt like a kid again, in Hogwarts having nightmares every other night, running into the boys' dorms and sleeping in Sirius' bed. But I'm not 14 and 15 anymore. I'm 29, and so is he. Our daughter is closer to that age than we are, and it was time to stop this.

"Mel…what you showed me, that felt like a memory…not a dream." I nod as my tears slow through a large amount of self-restraint and conviction,

"Yeah, well, do you remember right after we got married and moved in together, there was a raid on our house and you couldn't find me for a couple months?" He nods silently, trying to figure out where I was going with the story, "Well, you couldn't find me because I was in the Malfoy's unplottable basement." His eyes bore into mine, trying to discern if I was just fucking with him or if I was serious. _Mel… _I frown at him.

"Don't." He frowns back at me,

"No, don't you. I'm not your child and you're not in control of me. Whether you like it or not, I'm your equal and I can push you as much as I please, damn it. You forget what its like to be around someone who knows you better than anyone else. Cissy, she's a good friend, but no one gets you like I do. You can't lie to me, and you sure as Hell can't hide from the truth around me." I sigh but know he's telling the truth: the truth I really, really don't want to hear.

"I know, I'm sorry." Just then, my phone starts to ring. I grab it off my bedside table and look at the caller's name.

Erin Lingard.

I quickly hit accept and press the phone to the side of my face.

"Erin? Hello? Are you okay?" There is ragged breathing on the other end of the line and Sirius tries to talk to me but I wave him off, listening intently,

"Melanie—is tha—is that you?"

"Yes, it's me Erin, are you okay?"

"I—I don't know…Terry—he's here. What do I do?" I didn't even hesitate.

"Call the police. I'm on my way. Can you hold on for 10 or 15 minutes?"

"I—I think so."

"Good, Erin. I'll be right there. See you soon."

"Thank you…see you soon." The line disconnects and I start to throw on clothes as quickly as I can. I shove my wand into the gym bag that I had used earlier that day that held my license and wallet, and I grabbed the files for Erin and Terry's case and pushed it in along side the rest of my stuff. I was walking out the door when I shouted back,

"Sirius? Watch the kids, okay?" He comes out of our room and asks,

"Mel? What the fuck is going on?" I kiss him on the cheek lightly and answer quickly,

"Little problem with one of my cases. I'll be back in a little while, okay? Oh, and tell Cissy where I went."

"And where might that be?"

"Brooklyn." I run out of the door and call a cab in the quickly fading light. My phone rings again as I'm passing over the Brooklyn Bridge. It's Erin.

"Erin? I'm on my way okay? Just lay low for a little bit, I'll be there soon. Erin? Erin!" The line disconnected without a word from the other end. The cab pulls up to her house and Terry's car is parked outside, which spells psychopathic trouble for everyone involved. I get out of the car and dial 911 into my phone my thumb hovering over the little green send button on the screen, waiting for someone to show themselves as I walk myself into the house.

"Erin? Are you here?" There was a muted sound from the kitchen, which I follow. Then I realize: the police aren't here. I had told her to call the cops. Uh-oh. I find her in the kitchen, bleeding and hurt, "Are you okay? Okay, stupid question. What happened?" She doesn't answer immediately and when she does, her words are labored and ragged,

"You need—leave…go now. Terry—kill." I move to pull her up as she speaks, but someone enters the room behind me and I turn to come face to face with Terry Lingard. I grip onto a false calm expression.

"Hello Terry. Restraining orders aren't really your thing, are they?" He ignores my question,

"God, you women are predictable, aren't you?" I notice he has a gun and I silently press the send button on my phone.

"_911, what's your emergency?"_ I slip my thumb over the speaker. He continues to speak,

"I'm going to lose everything if you win. If you win this case, I'm done. I can't let you win."

"_Hello? What's your emergency? If there is no answer in the next 10 seconds, emergency response vehicles will be dispatched to your location."_

"Terry, put the gun down. No one else needs to get hurt."

"_Emergency vehicles are on their way."_

"You don't understand. I'll go to jail. Jail! I can't go somewhere like that. Places like that aren't meant for people like me."

"Terry. Put. The. Gun. Down." I repeated. Even as I spoke I was straining my ears for the sounds of sirens.

"No. Don't you understand? I have to do this. I have to!" The sirens appeared off in the distance, growing closer very, very quickly. He turns towards the door police will be coming through in no less than 2 minutes with a crazed look. He slips the safety off the gun and the last thing I hear is a woman screaming from behind me.

SIRIUS POV

I'm sitting on the couch when Cissy comes running out of her bedroom, frantic.

"Sirius. _Where is Melanie_?"

"She said there was a problem with one of her cases, she left like an hour ago. Why? What's going on, cuz?" Cissy starts banging on the girls' doors, halfway through my answer.

"Victoria Lillian! Antigone Alice! Get up right now you two!" Tori blearily opens one of the doors and asks her Godmother,

"Aunt Cissy, what's going on?" Cissy looks worried but answered her regardless,

"It's your mother. She's in the hospital." Tori's eyes snap wide open. I beat her to the next, obvious, question,

"What happened?"

"Terry Lingard shot her."


	7. Not What You Do, But Who You Are

**Disclaimer: Yeahhh.**

**Hi! Happy Sunday everyone! So, this is a very odd chapter, written mainly about Mel and Sirius' post-Hogwarts war-life. You can only imagine the x-rays the doctor gets off little soldier Mel.  
**

**Anyways, When it flips to Mel's POV and then Sirius, anything in italics is a flashback for this chapter, NOT them talking to each other. And most of you should recognize the flashbacks from Afraid of Greatness, yeah when she was in St. Mungo's.  
**

**This is where we see the damage inflicted by Azkaban onto Sirius, he tends to have a lot of inner ramblings about death. Poor guy :(  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

ANTIGONE POV

I woke up with Tori sprawled across my feet, with my mother banging on my door.

"Victoria Lillian! Antigone Alice! Get up right now you two!" Tori groans and I kick her to make her move.

"Nose goes." I say and press my index finger to my nose. She bitches a little but gets up and opens the door.

"Aunt Cissy, what's going on?" Mom answers her, more upset than I have ever heard her.

"It's your mother. She's in the hospital." I sit straight up in bed and I hear Sirius ask what we all want to know.

"What happened?" After a moment, Mom answers him, and I can hear the panic in her voice.

"Terry Lingard shot her."

"WHAT?" Tori screams at her Godmother,

"Tor, calm down, we're going to the hospital right now, just get dressed, okay? You too Anna." But we're not listening. I'm already dressed, and Tori has pulled on shoes. I place our wands in my purse and we walk out, and come face to face with Mom and Sirius, the latter of which looked extraordinarily calm, if not a little pale.

We all ran out of the building, piled into a cab and rode straight up to the Muggle hospital she was being kept at.

Tori and I run into the hospital and my Godsister starts banging on the counter, and screaming at the woman behind it. I physically pull her off the counter and Sirius takes up her position at the desk.

"Hi, we're here to see Melanie Black." She looks uninterested.

"Only next of kin are allowed to visit in intensive care." He raises an eyebrow. So that's where Tori got that particular knack.

"I'm her husband, this is our daughter," he motions to Tori, "This is her cousin," Mom, "and her Goddaughter," me, "Is that good enough for you?" His voice sharpens at the end and I got the distinct impression that Sirius Black was not one to take shit from anyone, if it meant that he could see her sooner. The lady looks like she doesn't quite know what to make of that particular announcement and just says,

"Down the hallway, elevator's on the left, floor 12, fourth door on the right." Toru pulls him away by the hand and Mom falls into step with me behind the Blacks.

"Anna, this is a really traumatic time for your Godfather, so we're going to be very quiet and just sit and wait, okay?" I nod to her as Tori begins to slam on the elevator button, the doors of which slide open with a cheery 'ding!'. She presses floor 12 and the elevator soundlessly slides up the building, with us inside. Mom and I are walking behind Tori and her father, when they turn into a room, Sirius running in, Tori stopping at the doorway. I stand next to her and look in the room, Mom behind us.

Sirius had gone over to the bed, and was leaning over the occupant. Melanie looked tired, but she looked different than usual. She looked alive, but very different, and to her credit: she was sitting up.

Like she was younger. They hug tightly and he grins at her and she laughs and bumps him on the forehead with the heel of her hand and he scowls. There are bandages covering part of her ribs, I assumed that's where she was shot. Mom gently moves Tori and I over to the side and a doctor walks in,

"Well, Mrs. Black, your x-rays just came back," She doesn't look worried, but her husband sure does. But like his wife, he says nothing, "You're a very lucky woman. Who has bones of steel. What occupation are you in, Mrs. Black? It seems you have more bones that have suffered trauma than bones that haven't." She shifts uncomfortably.

"Well, I had my daughter when I was 19, but up until then, I was in the employment of the British government. And you're quite right, I've broken almost every bone in my body. Twice."

"I don't mean to pry, it's just that I've never seen a human body so abused before, ma'm, I was wondering, if, well, if your heart had ever stopped." Tori is watching her mother with wide eyes, and I know I am too. I had never seen Mel like this before. She is so casual about breaking her body pretty much into two. Twice. She quietly answers the doctor.

"Four times." He looks like that _wasn't_ the answer he was expecting, but takes it in stride anyways, "I was young, and in a war. I was a soldier, as was my husband and all of my friends." Mom looks up and smiles humorlessly.

"You still are. You know what Mad-Eye used to say." Sirius nods sagely and I ask,

"What did Mad-Eye used to say? Mom? Mel? Sirius?" Mel recovers her composure first, and answers me,

"You have to be a certain type of person to be a soldier. Someone who lives and breathes for the fight, it's at the very core of your being and you can't take that out of a person. Mad-Eye was Sirius and my mentor in the department. He always used the say, along with 'Constant Vigilance!', he would always say," She clears her throat and says in a voice I assumed sounded like this Mad-Eye character, "' Taylor, you're job isn't being an Auror. You _are_ an Auror. It's who you are.'"

Tori raises an eyebrow, but does not comment. The doctor quickly recovers his composure.

"That explains a lot then. Well, the bullet that was recovered from your side upon your arrival here, which was a 45 caliber round, lodged itself into one of your ribs, barely cracking it. You have a single hairline fracture on the rib, and the obvious flesh wound. You'll be just fine, but you can say you've broken that rib three times now." Sirius relaxes.

"You know Mel, lucky isn't a adjective I usually use to describe you, but I'll take it." She laughs,

"Yeah, things usually happen to me in the worst way possible." He chuckles and nods in agreement and she looks past her husband, who up until now was occupying all of her attention and set eyes on her daughter. Sirius turns too. Mel smiles at her,

"Oh, Tor. Come here." Tori runs over to her mother's bed and hugs her. Sirius, feeling a little out of place, starts to back up a little, until Tori grabs him and pulls him into the hug as well. It was a very pretty picture, one I have seldom seen in person. Mom wraps an arm around me and I smile at her. She starts to guide me out of the room, but Mel calls us back.

"Cissy. Wait. We need to talk, before the enrollment period closes." Sirius looks at her curiously, but then his eyes widen with a 'oh!' Mom guides me back in, and Tori sits next to me in a plastic chair, Sirius electing to stay next to his wife.

MELANIE POV

I have a severe case of déjà vu as Cissy, Anna, and Tori sit in plastic hospital chairs in front of me and Sirius holds my hand as I sit in a hospital bed, wounded.

"_Petunia, come sit over here, this involves you too." Petunia looked like she rather wouldn't but came over and sat between her parents in the chairs next to the bed Lils and I were occupying._

Cissy starts the talking.

"There is a war coming. Let's not beat around the bush here. There's a war coming, and we need to answer the obvious questions. Sirius, you're obviously going to have to go after the rat, am I correct?" Sirius nods from next to me, "Yes, well, as I'm sure you're aware by now, I couldn't physically drag your wife away from you if I tried, so that means Mel, you'll be going with him." I answer automatically,

_I sat down on my bed, my legs hanging off the side. I heard someone else close the door and felt a weight press down on the bed next to me. An arm wrapped around me._

"Of course I will."

"Yes, well, girls, this is what we wanted to talk to you about: we're moving back to England, and want to know if you want to stay enrolled at Salem or not."

_Sirius rose from where he was sitting next to me, to make room for Lily._

Anna, the practical one questioned,

"What's our other option?" Hope was slowly growing in their eyes and I knew what they wanted us to say…

"Hogwarts is your other option, An, and you too, Tori." They shared one look

"…_Melanie will come to live with us for this summer and next, until you girls are done with school."_

Tori asked,

"Seriously? We can go?" Sirius grins from next to me,

"Siriusly." Cissy and I groan loudly at the serious Sirius pun and the two girls giggle, not yet sick to death of them. I add on to that, with a rather cynical tone,

"This is all great, but girls, especially Tori, you need to be aware that your father is wanted man there. People will say some rude and mean things about him, and you won't be able to say anything otherwise. Do you understand that? And Tor, you'll probably have to go by my maiden name, until your father's name can be cleared." She looks upset,

"Why? Why should I be ashamed of my family? How is that fair?!"

"_Well, you should have tried harder! If you had made better arguments he wouldn't do it! This is your fault!"_

I look sharply at her,

"Victoria. That is quite enough. You are going to Hogwarts as Victoria Taylor, or you stay at Salem, and _that_ is final."

"But Anna can go with her real name!"

"Lucius is not a wanted criminal, no matter how much he should be." That wasn't me, but Sirius, who had remained very quiet up until now.

"Dad? You agree with her on this? You'd let this happen?"

"Tori, it would be unsafe for you to go with my last name, especially being a transfer in the middle of your schooling. Besides, I know you're dying to meet that Godbrother of yours, and there's no way you'd get within 100 feet of him if they knew you were the 'mass murderer' Sirius Black's child."

"…_What if I had listened to you, Sirius? What then?"_

Tori seems to consider this.

"Well…I always _have_ wanted to go to Hogwarts, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt _just for a year_…" I nod encouragingly and don't say it could be more than a year until her father was cleared, but God willing, it would be less.

Cissy smiles,

"So it's settled then? The girls will enroll next year into Hogwarts as Third Years. I should probably contact Dumbledore." Sirius grins,

"Ah, Dumbles. I've missed that man." I snort and answer,

"Now we really need to stop calling him Dumbles." We exchange a look, much to the amusement of the younger set in the room and both laugh a little and say,

"Nah." I hug Tori and Sirius winks at me from over her shoulder.

_Lily crawled into the uncomfortable hospital bed with me, and hugged me as I cried myself to sleep, for the second time in the last month, over the Black brothers._

SIRIUS POV

I knew Mel was having a little déjà vu just by what her mind felt like, and I, like her, was having a hard time _not_ hearing the massively violent conversation we had in St. Mungo's in a room very much like this.

" …_No one does, because there's nothing to blame. I wasn't going to be married to your brother, as much as I like him as a person, I won't marry a Death Eater."_

"_What? When did he take the Mark?"_

"_He hasn't yet. A month after he turns 16, he's going to receive it. I'm really sorry I thought you knew. I assumed your parents would have mentioned it."_

"_November. He's going to become a Death Eater in November."_

"_Sirius. Don't do this to yourself. I shouldn't have told you."_

"_How long have you known?"_

"_A little over a month now."_

"_And you haven't tried to talk him out of it?" _

"_Are you kidding? I tried to talk him out of taking the Mark every single time I saw him. He just wouldn't listen. What Walburga and Orion think of him means too much to him."_

"_Well, you should have tried harder! If you had made better arguments he wouldn't do it! This is your fault!" _

"_Excuse me, but how is this my fault?! At least I tried! I begged him, I threatened to tell Dumbledore, I told him I'd never speak to him again if he took the Mark, I started crying when he told me he was doing it whether I liked it or not! At least I tried, it's not like I can say the same for you! You told me that I should stop hanging out with him! What if I had listened to you, Sirius? What then?"_

I had no answer then, but I did now: Reg would have almost certainly been alive, most definitely in Azkaban Prison. And one of us probably would have been the one to put him there.

Mel and I had the two highest arrest rates in the department when we were kids, and she had the genuine pleasure of putting my cousin (Bellatrix) in a jail cell. Right after us on that list was Lily and James Potter, Remus Lupin and Marlene McKinnon, and Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Melanie was right: we had been idiots to all become Aurors and expect that we'd all come out of it alive. Five of us had made it out alive, and only three sane. And only two actually had escaped with their lives, as I'd been thrown into Azkaban the day after the war was technically over. That was a sad statistic: two of a family of eight had made it out of that war okay. And then, obviously Cissy hadn't been working at that point at time, so I guess three had actually made it out, but still.

Three of ten. Lily: dead. James: dead. Marlene: dead. Alice: insane. Frank: insane. Peter: traitor. Me: Azkaban. Melanie: forced to move from her home. Remus: alone. Cissy: married off to an abusive lunatic.

I looked at Tori and Anna and hoped to God that if there was another war, they wouldn't come out of it like we had: broken and alone.


	8. Author's Note, So Not A Chapter

HI! So, sorry this isn't a chapter, but I have an announcement to make!

So, I was talking with Lizaluvsdoggies, and she suggested that I make a notice-like thing about Anna's full name, which I think is a splendid idea, so thanks for that.

I'm sure there's a lot of you (maybe) wondering about where I came up with the name Antigone. Well here's your answer:

Antigone (not pronounced anti-gone, but an-tig-o-nee) is the name of a Greek play, a tragedy, and it's the name of a girl who has this whole problem with her uncle the king about what is morally right (Her uncle refuses to bury her brother and give him a funeral because he 'attacked' his city of Thebes, even though he was technically in the right).

Anyways, she ultimately ends up being put to death for what she wholeheartedly believes is right, and before they can starve her to death, she hangs herself.

Yeah. It's sad, but the point is that I like to draw parallels between well-known works like that and the personality and characters of my characters as people, so I hope that helps everyone get a grip for Anna, and how to actually say her name.

But while we're all here, I'd also like to say that if you review one of my fics, well, first of all, thank you lots, and that I can't and won't respond to anything you may want to know or anything like that if you aren't signed in, so PLEASE make sure you're signed in if you want me to answer you!

Sorry for the chapter-note-thing, and see you guys (most likely) Sunday!

Stars.


	9. Fierce

**Disclaimer: :(  
**

**Wow, long time no see guys! So, as most of you are also experiencing if you're still in school, it's that time of year again: EXAM TIME! So, if you're wondering why the updates are few and far between, it's because I go to a heavily academic school and grades are a massive part of my life, sooo, yeah, but on a happier note, tomorrow marks the first day of my last week of school until break, so get ready for some MAJOR updates in about a week and a half or so. You get a flashback that I wrote up especially for this as it wasn't in Afraid of Greatness, and the girls getting sorted, so your welcome (if you like it)!**

**Read, review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

NARCISSA POV

"…And I assume the enrollment of the girls has to do with Victoria's father?" I raise an eyebrow.

"I have said nothing about Victoria's father, Albus. What are you implying?" He looks at me like I'm a blithering idiot. Maybe he picked that particular trait up from his potions master.

"Narcissa, you cannot seriously think I believed that Victoria Taylor is anything but Victoria Black in actuality. I knew Melanie and Sirius when they were teenagers, and you cannot honestly expect me to believe that Melanie would leave her husband, incarcerated murderer or not? No, they love each other far too much for that. There are some things even Azkaban can't change." I sigh through the Floo.

"I suppose not. He's innocent, Albus. He wasn't the secret keeper. It was little Peter Pettigrew. He betrayed the Potters. It wasn't my cousin." Not many things take Albus Dumbledore by surprise, but this, _this_ just about knocked him over.

"You must bring Sirius and Melanie to me. Victoria and Antigone as well."

"Albus, if you get him arrested…"

"Yes, yes, the Lady Black will brutally murder me with her bare hands and set my entrails on fire. I'm well aware of this and have to admit that Melanie Black scares just as much now as she did when she was nineteen. I have never seen someone so fiercely protective of those she loves." I snort.

"You should meet their daughter. Tori's a handful alright." He grins a little but says,

"I suppose I should warn Minerva that she'll have another Black coming her way?" I nod.

"Most likely. Tori's made of the same stuff her parents are. She's strong and incredibly loyal. Minnie's going to go completely grey by the end of the year, or possibly the meeting. Anna and Tori remind me of James and Sirius at that age: young, fierce, and quick-tempered. Who like to blow things up." Albus laughs.

"Ah, poor Minerva. Floo back as quickly as possible Miss. Black." I nod and return back to my house. Poor Minerva indeed. Anna and Tori, accompanied by Mel and Sirius, walk in the door. Well, Anna and Tori walked. Mel hobbled, leaning on her husband's shoulder, which was buckling under the weight of her. Sirius sets her gently onto the sofa and she grins at me.

"So, Cis, what did Dumbles have to say about a Potter, Black, _and_ a Taylor being in the same year again?" I laugh

"He knows Tori is your daughter Sirius." Neither of them looks very surprised, "and he wants to meet you two, along with Anna and Tori in his office as soon as possible." Mel frowns.

"Absolutely not. I'll go, but Sirius, you need to stay here. The minute you set foot back in Britain, you're a wanted man again." I continue over her

"I told him that you're innocent, Sirius. I told him it was Peter not you who betrayed the Potters. He won't get you arrested, that much I'm sure of." Tori asks,

"How can you be so sure of him?" I grin at Mel, who smirks a little, knowing what I was going to say,

"I was going to tell him what was going to happen if he got your father arrested and he said, and I quote, 'Yes, yes, the Lady Black will brutally murder me with her bare hands and set my entrails on fire. I'm well aware of this and have to admit that Melanie Black scares just as much now as she did when she was nineteen. I have never seen someone so fiercely protective of those she loves'. I don't think we have to worry."

"The Lady Black?" Mel sighs from her position on the couch.

"Tor, you have to realize that the Blacks are a very old, _very_ rich family. The woman who wears this ring, my wedding band, is technically the Lady Black." She grins a little,

"What does that make me?" I gesture to her hand where a purple rings sits on her middle finger and answer my Goddaughter

"That's not the heir's ring, that's kept with your mother, and besides, it's much to masculine for your tastes, trust me, but it's the ring that marks you as a Black, a member of the family." Sirius sighs and helps Mel up again,

"Well, are we going or not?" Mel groans a little, but says,

"Yeah, we're going. Help me up." She commands jokingly, but he complies nevertheless. They move into the Floo together and they're gone in a flash of emerald flames, leaving me with our daughters, both arguing about who got to go first.

SIRIUS POV

I stumble into a room I spent a lot of my time under 17 in. The portraits are still the same and I'm pretty sure Dumbles hasn't moved anything in the almost 15 years we've been done and graduated. I set Mel in the same chair she sat in when we agreed to join the Order and I sit next to her and take her hand, in the same way I had when we were 17 and 18, signing our lives away.

"_I don't think this is a good idea guys." Peter says to everyone at large. James and Sirius both roll their eyes, Melanie and Marlene quickly behind them._

"_Please, Peter, everyone in this room has already been marked for death somehow in this war, we might as well do some good if we're already going to die." James answers his friend scathingly._

"_No we're not." The smaller statured boy answers. Melanie speaks up, holding Sirius' hand in the chair next to her like it was her lifeline._

"_Yes we are. Sirius and I are blood-traitors, James married a Muggleborn, Lily is the said Muggleborn, Alice's family are blood-traitors, Cissy clubbed Lucius over the head with a beater's bat and told him to go get fucked, Remus is a werewolf, Marlene is not only dating said werewolf, but is a McKinnon, so she might as well be Muggleborn. You're a half-blood, and are wanted by association to us." Sirius grips her hand even tighter as the Headmaster walks back into his study where he left them debating. He lays out a piece of parchment in front of them._

"_Sign if you have made up your mind to join, if not, I promise there will be no ill wishes from me, nor anyone else." Sirius and James stare at each other for a long moment then both grab for the paper and after a moment of debating, James gets to sign first. He signs his name with a flourish and hands it to Lily, who doesn't hesitate before writing 'Lily Potter' in her pretty script. She hands it to Marlene and Remus who both sign their names. _

_The parchment then goes to Melanie who with a heavy look to Sirius, who smiles a little with a squeeze to her hand, releases it, allowing her to sign her name. 'Sirius Black' goes right under where 'Melanie Taylor' had signed her name, even though she was engaged to the said Black, she still bore her maiden name. Alice and Frank don't hesitate either, but Peter stops for a long moment and stares at the parchment before signing in a shaking hand, 'Peter Pettigrew'. 'Narcissa Black' joins him on the parchment and Cissy hands it back to their old headmaster. He smiles at them and says gently to all of them proud of his Gryffindors,_

"_Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix."_

I smile at Mel, and see that the same memories are flashing in her mind too. What we don't say is that that moment in the Headmaster's office was the last time we were all together. Marlene had been killed not four days after that, during the attack on her entire family, and then the attack on Alice and Frank had taken their sanity about a month after our wedding. Mellie had cried for days that one of her best friends wasn't there to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. I knew Marlene's face still haunted her dreams alongside the rest of our friends who we had lost in the war almost 15 years ago.

It was still beautiful though, the office, not the wedding, although that was nice too. Hogwarts was just as I remembered it, as old as the world itself and just as breathtaking.

Just then a door opens and out steps none other than Albus Dumbledore himself. There's a growl from beside me and I feel that Melanie's more canine side is slipping out a little.

"Ah, Lord and Lady Black, how pleasant to see you both."

MELANIE POV

I didn't trust him, but I did trust Cissy, so when she said we had nothing to be worried about, I believed her. That didn't stop me from wanting to rip out Dumbledore's jugular with my bare hands for inadvertently killing my adoptive brother and sister, and ruining mine and everyone else's lives who were unfortunate enough to be involved.

"Ah, Lord and Lady Black, how pleasant to see you both." He says to us and I start a little at the title I had all but forgotten was technically mine, now that Walburga and Orion had died. I can tell Sirius feels the same, but doesn't say anything otherwise. Sirius says nothing and I nod slightly.

"Albus." He opens his mouth to reply to my less than friendly response when Tori and Anna come tumbling out of the fireplace. Tori bounds up and starts chattering excitedly to her Godsister.

"An, this is it! Can you believe we're actually here? I wonder where we're going to be sorted. Oh, I'll just die if im not in your house! I wonder if we'll get to meet Harry!" Anna takes up the stream of chatter, the girls talking over each other.

"I know, we're here! Oh my goodness, I wonder if there will be cute boys! I can't believe we actually don't have to go back to Salem! Oh-my-god! Nate's gonna be here too! He transferred, remember?" The girls both scream simultaneously as Minerva McGonagall walks in with her hands on her temples.

"My god. A Black, Potter, and a child that's half and half you two." She gestures to us, "I can actually feel myself losing years of life. Are we going to sort these children, Albus?" Dumbledore nods and raises an eyebrow that quite clearly says 'not in front of the children, Melanie'. He takes the Sorting Hat off its shelf and Anna and Tori squabble over who gets to go first until it's decided that Anna gets to go first because 'Malfoy, Antigone' is before 'Taylor, Victoria' alphabetically.

She sits down on a stool and the hat falls over her eyes… a minute passes. Two minutes pass. The poor hat was probably having fits because of her father, twin, and her mother that had been resorted in her sixth year. Another minute passes by. Then finally,

"GRYFFINDOR!" Cissy smiles and hugs her daughter as she happily bounds off the stool and Sirius slaps her a high-five and I hug her too in her way by to her mom.

Tori hesitantly sit on the stool and the hat covers her eyes…

VICTORIA POV

I see Mom and Dad's faces just before the hat slips over my eyes. I knew they were worried. Except them and Cissy all of their families had been in Slytherin. And I knew where I wanted to be, and it was where my family was. Harry, Anna, Mom, Dad, and Cissy.

"_Ah! Another Black! But what's this? A Taylor? And a Malfoy as well? Oh, but you're not your average, run of the mill Pureblood, are you? Your father is an accused murderer and your mother a high-power Muggle attorney. You have no idea who she was before that, do you? No, you have no idea._

_Your parents weren't this hard to sort, actually, your father exceedingly easy. Your mother proved slightly more difficult, it came down to Slytherin and Gryffindor, but you, you are a paradox. Smart, there's no doubt. Loyal, exceedingly so. Kind, remarkably. Cunning, just like your ancestors. But you're lazy, just like your parents and Godsister, aren't you? Yes, so not Ravenclaw. Lazy also takes out Hufflepuff, so here we have Gryffindor and Slytherin. You are cunning and brave. Ambitious and loyal. Which will it be little one? You have the same choice in front of you your mother had before her almost 20 years ago. Slytherin or Gryffindor?" _I hesitate only for a moment.

"_Gryffindor."_

"_That's what she said too. _GRYFFINDOR!_" _Cissy pulls the hat off my head and Mom and Dad both hug me at the same time. I hear Dad breathe into my ear,

"Congratulations." Just then the older man who I assume is Professor Dumbledore clears his throat and Mom, Dad, and Cissy all turn to look at him. Cissy looks rather relaxed, but Mom looks like she would like nothing more than to strangle him with her bare hands.

**So the logistics of the girls being at Hogwarts and Sirius and Melanie's apparent not-so-contentedness with the professor is all next chapter.**

**(Hint: the temper Mel has kept under wraps so far makes a surprise appearance)  
**


	10. The Easy Way Out

**Disclaimer: :(**

**I'm BACKK! SO i know it's been a long time, and i'm sorry, but life has gotten in the way, and i found the scene between Dumbles, Mel and Sirius very VERY difficult to write. i hope you guys like it, and this is cutting short because my laptop is dying AHHHH!  
**

**Read, review, and enjoy,  
**

**Stars.  
**

MELANIE POV

"Miss. Malfoy, Miss. Taylor, why don't you let Professor McGonagall show you around the school, so you don't feel quite so lost on your first day?" Sirius pointedly looks at me and I shake my head. _We wouldn't have to worry about them getting lost if they had the map… _**Not a chance in Hell. Besides, you and James had it confiscated to 'pass it on to a new and bright generation of troublemakers via Filch', remember? **_Oh, yeah. _**Oh. Yeah. **He grins and Cissy shakes her head at us. Ah, it felt so good to not be a parent for a little bit. Tori and Anna both shake their heads little, but say nothing except,

"Lead on, Minnie!" Sirius, Cissy, and I all burst out laughing and Minnie shrieks wordlessly, and then says,

"It's Professor, Malfoy, Bla—Taylor." Tori grins cheekily at her,

"Sure thing Professor Minnie." The older woman rolls her eyes and looks straight at me and deadpans,

"I blame you for this."

"What about him?" I gesture to my husband who protests with a,

"Hey!"

"He was in prison, Taylor. I. Blame. You." As she walks out of the room, the three of us correct her,

"It's Black now, Minnie!" I hear her scream in response and Tor and Anna shriek with laughter. With the kids now gone, Sirius and I both turn our gazes to Dumbledore, and Cissy seems to be in a deep and meaningful conversation with the Sorting Hat in the corner of the Headmaster's study. I see Sirius' eyes harden as he looks at the old man, and I personally want nothing more than to kill him. To his credit, he seemed to either ignore this all racing through both of our minds as I could tell neither of us were even pretending to block our thoughts, or just thought we didn't mean it. We did.

"Well, Sirius, Melanie, I have to say, this is a much less pleasant greeting I got from either of you the last time I saw you." Sirius answers him in a quiet snarl,

"You testified against me. You put me in jail, Albus." He puts his head down, and I override whatever it was he was going to say,

"You told me that my husband had killed my brother, sister, one of my closest friends, and thirteen Muggles. _Oh, please forgive_ me for not being exactly thrilled to see you. And trust me when I say that I wouldn't be here if I trusted you not to put Sirius back in jail." His eyes widened. I knew what he was thinking; I didn't have to be in his head to know: we were different, and dangerous. This was almost fifteen years of pent up anger and resentment pouring out. We could kill him, maybe not separately, but definitely together.

"I said and did what I thought was right." He quietly answered. Just then a glass instrument of some kind, some tool of learning, shattered. _Mel…be careful. There are other people in this castle._ I ignore him, letting it all come out, not caring who got hurt in the process.

"You're a liar. You would have insisted on a trial, held back on telling me the truth until you were absolutely certain. You didn't do what was _right_, you did what was _easy_. Innocent until proven guilty indeed." I throw his words back at him, almost cruelly.

"I don't pretend to be perfect, but you two should both know I've always tried to do what was right for everyone involved." That tickles my memory, a long forgotten memory, from when I was a child, still living with my parents.

"_Please, even Dumbledore sided with us at one point! The Greater Good indeed! He's had the same thoughts as all of us at one point! Saint Dumbledore, protector of the Mudbloods, as if."_

I whisper quietly,

"The Greater Good." His head snaps up, shocked.

"What did you just say?" _Mel, what did you just say? _I shove the memory into Sirius' mind, and in the blink of an eye, he had seen it. I feel his anger, seeping into my mind, feeding my frustration and betrayal that was difficult to control at the best of times. This man, who we had all looked up to as the defender of light, had at one point stood for everything we had fought to escape since we were eleven, and even before then.

In the back of my mind, it was like someone turned a faucet on. There was a trickle of something, that was not unfamiliar, but not entirely comfortable either, but welcome. Power. It was the magic that I had suppressed for my entire life, since I had accidentally almost taken Sirius' arm off in second year, and Snape's head in Fifth. It was the accidental magic that hadn't faded when I got my wand. It was the uncontrollable power and need to control my surroundings.

I opened my mouth and before I could get even a sound out, Cissy's hand was clamped over my mouth and Sirius' arms were around me, holding me back. They knew. They knew me far too well. Sirius could most likely feel the ill-controlled anger and bloodlust that were the sole reasons that we were all standing here, but also the biggest flaw in my character. Quick to anger was what Marley had always said, and she was right. Once I was upset, there was going to be blood shed, the only question was whose it was going to be.

"Mom? Dad? Cissy?" We all look up to see Anna and Tori, who had spoken, standing in the doorway with Minnie behind them, one of her hands on each of their shoulders. I'll give it to the woman: she can smell a disaster a mile away. Cissy answers my daughter in a tight voice.

"Tor. An. Go with Professor McGonagall. Now, girls." Just as she finishes speaking, a man comes into the room, brushing past Minnie and the girls. He looks the same as he did when he was a child, same brooding look, same hair, and same obnoxious look. Same crooked nose he used to look down on us with. Severus Snape really hasn't changed a bit since we were 17. _Now, you can attack Snivelly. You have my blessing. _Cissy cautiously removes her hands from my mouth and Sirius lets go of me, having the full intention of letting me go after Snape if the desire strikes me at any point in the near future.

"Ah, a family reunion, how touching. Tell me Taylor, what's it like having to leave everything you love because your husband decided you weren't worth it? But wait, there wasn't really anything left to leave, seeing as you all made such as screaming mess of your lives." Minerva speaks to the girls as I attempt to physically disembowel the man on the other side of the room,

"Victoria, Antigone, this is Professor Snape—"

"WHAT?!"

"—and he will be your Potions Master while you attend Hogwarts." I look desperately to her,

"What happened to Sluggy?"

"Horace retired after the fall of Voldemort, the death of Lily Potter was very hard on him you know."

"Yes, I can only imagine how hard that must have been on him." Dumbledore visibly winces at the words, but says and Anna both look at me confused, but say nothing, something highly unlike both them. Sirius looks at me,

"Mel, you shouldn't be here. You just got out of the _hospital_. Go home and lay down. As great as lighting Snivelly would feel, it wouldn't do anyone any good to have you tear out your stitches. And it would traumatize the girls forever." I glance at Tori and Anna, and they are both staring at me with wide eyes. I feel the anger recede and I say quietly,

"Get out Severus."

"Since when do I take orders from the like of you?"

"Since I almost took your head off in Fifth Year—"

"YOU DID WHAT?!" Minnie screams but is ignored,

"—Leave now and keep all of your major appendages. I'm not kidding." He turns to leave after a nod from Dumbledore and I call to him, "I'm doing this for her, Severus. For Lily. Remember that." I see the flash of pain in his eyes and he walks out of the room, closing the door with a snap. I lean back up against Sirius' shoulder, feeling the pain slowly ebb back into my ribs as the adrenaline slowly wore off. He wraps an arm around me to hold me up and Cissy says,

"Go home you two. I'll take care of the paperwork for Tori. Girls, stay with me. Your parents need a moment to be alone in the quiet." They both nod and Fawkes catches their eyes as Sirius helps me hobble over to the fireplace. We step in together and disappear in a flash of green flames, heading back home.


End file.
